Git and Command-line Fear

Git has been gaining a lot of traction lately, and rightly so. I’ve used it for a couple of years now, for all my projects (Fluent NHibernate and Docu being the prominent ones), but something that hasn’t changed is the tag-line of “but Windows support isn’t very good!”. What you quickly learn is that when people say that, they actually mean there isn’t a Visual Studio plug-in or some similar all-singing all-dancing GUI; this is a dire misrepresentation of Git, because it’s tooling on Windows is excellent if your definition of tooling includes the command-line.

It’s something ingrained in Windows developers, they hate the command-line. There’s a very good chance that if you encounter a Windows developer that does enjoy using the command-line it’s because they’ve also worked on another platform or in another environment that encourages command-line use (Rails is a good example). I’ve tried various ways of encouraging people to experiment, but very few work without being able to sit down and just show them something. It’s very much like R# adoption, nobody thinks it’ll speed them up until they see how fast someone else can be.

Back onto Git. If you don’t like what Git does, then that’s fine, but don’t label yourself as Alt.Net or a continuous improver if this sounds like you: “I define myself by choosing the best tool for each situation, but there’s no way you’ll get me using the command-line.” Way to go, oh open-minded one. Try it, you might like it.

The other techies have been posting some great Git posts which can help you get up to speed. I hope to contribute, with less bile, soon.